Lt. Col. Tamatha Patterson of the Army with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.Credit
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The historic decision to lift the military’s ban on women in combat had its roots in the personal experiences in war zones of Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both men said on Thursday. For General Dempsey, it all began in Baghdad.

He had just arrived there in 2003 as a division commander, he said at a Pentagon news conference, when he clambered aboard a Humvee and asked the driver where he was from. “And I slapped the turret gunner on the leg and I said, ‘Who are you?’ “ General Dempsey recalled. “And she leaned down and said, ‘I’m Amanda.’ ”

As people chortled, General Dempsey continued: “And I said, ‘Oh, O.K.’ So a female turret gunner is protecting a division commander. And it’s from that point on that I realized something had changed, and it was time to do something about it.”

Almost a decade later, General Dempsey and Mr. Panetta signed a document formally rescinding a 1994 ban that restricted women from infantry, artillery, armor and other such combat roles. “Not everyone is going to be able to be a combat soldier,” Mr. Panetta said, “but everyone is entitled to a chance.”

Mr. Panetta said his thinking evolved as he traveled over the past 18 months as defense secretary to Iraq and Afghanistan and across the United States speaking to women who had served. “It’s been almost 50 years since I served in the military,” he said, referring to his two years as an Army intelligence officer. “And to go out now and to see women performing the roles that they are performing and doing a great job at it, I think it just encouraged me, and I think it encouraged all of us that everybody should have a chance to perform at any mission, if they can meet the qualifications.”

An aide to Mr. Panetta recalled that the defense secretary had talked extensively with a female V-22 Osprey pilot about her experiences in war zones when she flew him to visit a military ship off the coast of California. He also visited a military policewoman at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio who had been shot in Afghanistan guarding a forward operating base.

“When I’ve gone to Arlington to bury our dead, there is no distinction that’s made between the sacrifices of men and women in uniform,” Mr. Panetta said. “They serve, they’re wounded and they die right next to each other.”

Both he and General Dempsey said the new policy was in many ways an affirmation of what they had seen was already occurring on the battlefield, where women have frequently found themselves in combat over the past decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan — although not officially recognized for it, and therefore held back in a military in which combat experience is crucial to advancement. Mr. Panetta and General Dempsey said it was essential that the military offer equal opportunities to women and men.

“They’re fighting and they’re dying together, and the time has come for our policies to reflect that reality,” Mr. Panetta said.

Video

Ban Lifted on Women in Combat Roles

Anu Bhagwati, a female veteran and executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, reacts to the Pentagon lifting the ban on women in combat.

Mr. Panetta and General Dempsey said they had met weekly for more than a year about lifting the ban and had kept President Obama informed about developments. In December, Pentagon officials said, Mr. Panetta and the Joint Chiefs reached a tentative agreement that women should be permitted in combat. Mr. Panetta thought about it over the holidays and returned early this month to receive a letter from General Dempsey dated Jan. 9 strongly recommending the change.

They described the president as supportive but not intimately involved in the process. In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Obama said the change reflected “the courageous and patriotic service of women through more than two centuries of American history and the indispensable role of women in today’s military.”

And while they described the decision as reflecting a consensus in the Pentagon, the move still has opponents. In the most vocal official opposition to the changes, Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who is set to become the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, warned that some in Congress may seek legislation to limit the combat jobs open to women.

“I want everyone to know that the Senate Armed Services Committee, of which I am the ranking member, will have a period to provide oversight and review,” Mr. Inhofe said in a statement. “During that time, if necessary, we will be able to introduce legislation to stop any changes we believe to be detrimental to our fighting forces and their capabilities. I suspect there will be cases where legislation becomes necessary.”

Pentagon officials said that the different services would have until May 15 to submit their plans for carrying out the new policy, but that the military wanted to move as quickly as possible. Military officials said that more than 200,000 jobs were now potentially open to women, including in elite Special Operations commando units like the Navy SEALs and Delta Force. A high percentage of men fail to make the cut for those units.

“I think we all believe that there will be women who can meet those standards,” General Dempsey said.

If a service determines that a specialty should not be open to women, Pentagon officials said that representatives of the service would have to make the case to the defense secretary by January 2016.

Officials said repeatedly that they would not lower the physical standards for women in rigorous combat jobs like the infantry, but they said they would review requirements for all the military specialties in coming months and potentially change them to keep up with, for example, advances in equipment and weaponry.

“It comes down to standards,” said Gen. Robert W. Cone, the head of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. The future requirements for assignment to a combat job, he said, will be “more functional physical fitness tests than situps, pull-ups and two-mile runs.”

For example, a woman seeking to join a tank unit might be tested on skills for lifting and loading a heavy shell, while a woman hoping to join an infantry unit might have to pass a test that includes hiking over distances with a heavy pack and dragging a wounded comrade to safety. General Cone pledged that the Army was committed to “gender-neutral” physical fitness tests.

Marine officials also said they might change the initial physical standards that recruits have to meet before they are sent off to boot camp.

A version of this article appears in print on January 25, 2013, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Military Chiefs Cite Personal Encounters in Lifting Women’s Combat Ban. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe